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In an essay on Kant and Goethe, Ernst Cassirer makes the following telling observation – it begins with a quote from Goethe himself:

"Kant," says Goethe, "never took any notice of me, although independently I was following a course similar to his. I wrote my Metamorphosis of Plants before I knew anything of Kant, and yet it is entirely in the spirit of his ideas.”

"Was ist mit diesem Rätselwort gemeint?" – "What means this riddle?" we are tempted to ask with Faust, in reading this passage. The words are indeed paradoxical. What has Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants to do with Kant? And how could Goethe say that his conception of nature agreed with Kant's ideas? At first glance we can discover no similarity between them, we see only a sharp

contrast. This contrast can be expressed in two words, "mathematics'' and "Newton”." (Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe: Two Essays, p.61)

When Cassirer expresses the contrast between Goethe’s conception of nature and Kant’s philosophy in two words “mathematics” and “Newton,” he is not in fact marking two separate points of disagreement, but two closely related aspects of a single issue. Goethe’s strident criticism of Newtonian physics (optics, in particular) and his rejection of certain uses of mathematics in natural science center on Newtonian method. Newton uses theoretical analysis of the quantifiable aspects of a few well-chosen phenomena to arrive at an a priori mathematized set of basic principles which then serves both as a framework within which competing theories can be compared and as a foundation of a true theory. In discussing Goethe’s general approach to science in this section, I will primarily focus on this contrast between Goethe’s methodology and the Newtonian method. Although Goethe’s reading of Kant is, by all accounts, idiosyncratic, I will briefly come back to some of what Goethe and Kant do have in common later in the dissertation when I consider the viability of Hegel’s approach to practical philosophy as an alternative to that of Kant.

In addition to producing a number of historically important works in the so-called “descriptive” natural sciences – botany, anatomy, zoology, and geology, Goethe was also deeply engaged with “experimental” physical sciences, where his researches culminated in the development of the theory of color. Goethe’s experiments with light and prismatic colors led to the publication of his Contributions to Optics (Beiträge zur Optik) in 1791/1792 and later, in a refined and expanded form, to the much more polemical Theory of Colors (Zur Farbenlehre) that appeared in 1810. While Goethe reportedly considered his work on color and his opposition to Newtonian optics much more valuable than any

of his literary accomplishments,191 it was received highly unsympathetically by most 19th century physicists. Perhaps due to the development of phenomenological approaches in the sciences and Pierre Duhem’s criticism of Newtonian method, and of crucial experiments in particular,192 there was renewed interest in Goethe’s work by at least some 20th century scientists and philosophers of science. Nobel-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg, in his lecture “On the History of the Physical Interpretation of Nature," notes that Goethe’s “bitter struggle against Newton’s physical optics” and the development of his own theory of color were rooted in Goethe’s resistance to the idea that scientific progress requires abandonment of “living and immediate understanding” of nature in favor of ever-more abstract, mathematized theories. Given the way modern physics has proceeded, Heisenberg writes, “It would be superficial to neglect this struggle as unimportant, there is a good reason for one of the most eminent of men using all his power to combat the achievement of Newton’s optics.”193

What are Goethe’s reasons? These reasons have to do with two closely related aspects of Newtonian method that seem to place him in stark opposition to the Kantian view – mathematization (or formalization) of science and Newton’s version of Baconian

experimentalism with its focus on crucial experiments.194

Let me briefly take up Goethe’s polemic on each of these points.

191

Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, February 19th, 1829, p.377.

192

In particular, see Duhem’s The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, 1914.

193

Werner Heisenger, “On the History of the Physical Interpretation of Nature” in Philosophical Problems

of Quantum Physics, Ox Bow Pr; 2nd Edition (June 1979), p. 37. 194

Indeed, Goethe clearly recognized Newton’s method of crucial experiments as closely related to the mathematization of science. By Newton’s version of Baconian experimentalism I mean his particular take on the use of Crucial Experiments. I have argued in Chapter I that while Baconian experimental scientists

2.2

While Kant argues that any proper natural science must be based on mathematics as its a priori foundation,195 Goethe notoriously calls for banishment of all attempts to found natural science on mathematics, or any other formal or a priori basis. He rails against the idea that genuine knowledge of the natural world can be adequately captured in mathematical formulas and insists that “[a] strict separation must be maintained between physical science and mathematics”.196 But, it is important to recognize that Goethe is not hostile to mathematics in general. Indeed, he calls on scientists to learn from mathematical proofs “the meticulous care required to exhibit things in unbroken succession”197 and, as we shall see, at times even compares his own approach to that of mathematicians. One clue to what Goethe finds problematic in the use of mathematics in science comes from reflecting on the fact that he seems to have no problem with descriptive or phenomenological laws, such as Kepler’s laws of planetary motions198 or Galileo’s law of free fall. Laws of this kind mathematically describe the relations among certain phenomena, but do not attempt to use mathematics to “deduce” or specify the fundamental forces or causes behind the phenomena. Mathematics can be fruitfully applied after the phenomena are fully apprehended through careful and comprehensive

thought of Experimentum Crucis primarily as a way definitively to rule out certain theories or hypotheses, Newton also stressed its affirmative, and, under certain conditions, even demonstrative value.

195

MFNS (4:470).

196

Goethe writes, for example: “An important task: to banish mathematical-philosophical theories from those areas of physical science where they impede rather than advance knowledge.” and “It is a false notion that a phrase of a mathematical formula can ever take the place of, or set aside, a phenomenon” (GOS pp.65-67).

197

(GOS, p.67).

198

Kepler first came up with his laws with the help of a massive quantity of highly accurate and comprehensive observational data compiled by Tycho Brache.

experimentation. But, on Goethe’s view, it can neither determine what kinds of experiments a scientific researcher should care about nor serve as the foundation of natural science – as the basis on which all genuine understanding of the natural world must rest. There are at least two reasons for this.

First, mathematics only deals with those aspects of nature and with those phenomenal properties that are quantifiable or measurable. It does not reach to, and cannot completely account for, those aspects that are not amenable to mathematical formalization. This includes, in particular, the formative power that governs development, adaptation and other organic functions of living beings. Here, indeed, Goethe seems to be in agreement with Kant. In general, Goethe thinks that mathematization tends to abstract from, and ignore, qualitative differences between various kinds of phenomena and phenomenal properties, cutting off, as it were, the possibility of comprehending what is active and living in nature. As he remarks in the preface to the Theory of Colors, it is “the abstraction we are afraid of”.

Second, for Goethe, attempts to ground our understanding of nature on mathematical principles amount to imposing on the objects of study standards and structures that are external to them. With respect to living organisms, in particular, he writes: “The process of measuring is a coarse one, and extremely imperfect when applied to a living object. A living thing cannot be measured by something external to itself; if it must be measured, it must provide its own gauge“.199 A scientist must approach even inorganic nature in a way

199

See GOS p.66. According to Goethe, mathematics has been misapplied by mathematical physicists like Newton even in their study of non-organic phenomena such as light and color: “I receive mathematics as the most sublime and useful science, so far as they are applied in their proper place…The mathematicians did not find out the metamorphosis of plants. I have achieved this discovery without the aid of

mathematics, and the mathematicians were forced to put up with it. To understand the phenomena of colour, nothing is required but unbiased observation and a sound head…” (GOS pp.66-67)

that allows him to understand the phenomena according to their own natural organization and presentation (naturgemäße Darstellung) and without imposing on them some external and artificial conceptual scheme – the scientist’s own theoretical constructs and prejudices (imposing geometry of rays on our understanding of the nature of light, for example).

Focusing on a select set of quantifiable properties that are presupposed as fundamental puts the proverbial cart (theorizing) before the horse (thorough and comprehensive familiarity with the phenomena). This leads to theories that tend to mistake mere accidental properties for the essential nature of things and reify mathematical constructions (e.g., posit hidden causes and forces). This is precisely what happens, in Goethe’s view, when, Newton posits white light to be essentially a bundle of differently refrangible rays (rays of differently colored light), failing to recognize light as a fundamental phenomenon that produces colors through interaction with darkness.

2.3

The other (related) aspect of Newtonian method that Kant praises (and makes philosophical use of) and Goethe finds problematic is Newton’s version of Baconian experimentalism, and particularly his use of crucial experiments. Baconian scientists thought that nature must be interrogated through the tribunal of experiments that constrain it under conditions not normally encountered in nature, for, as Bacon insists, "the secrets of nature reveal themselves more readily under the vexations of art than when they go their own way."200

200

See New Organon, bk.1, §98. In his “Mathematical vs. Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science”, Thomas Kuhn provides the following helpful description of the innovations of the Baconian method which distinguished it from the older empirical modes of inquiry: “[The practitioners of Baconian experimental method]seldom aimed to demonstrate what was already known or to determine a

Goethe’s opposition to this approach is rooted in his conception of nature as an organized, self-organizing and self-developing whole.201 His view was partly influenced (and, to his mind, partly confirmed) by Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Goethe was impressed by Kant’s claim that we can rightfully extend the concept of a natural end to the whole of nature, considering it as if it were a self-sufficient organized being – as an idealized “system of ends,” whose parts and the whole reciprocally influence one another.202 For Kant, this idea of nature as a “system of ends” is a regulative principle of teleological judgment which does not aim to make knowledge claims about the whole of nature as an object of experience or as it is in itself. Its role is to guide scientific investigation in discovering and unifying causal (mechanical) laws towards the ideal of a complete system of scientific knowledge.

It is not entirely clear from Goethe’s writings whether he treats this idea as a regulative principle along Kantian lines or as something more metaphysically robust. While the latter is, perhaps, more likely, the former is not inconsistent with his approach to experimental science if the role of this idea is conceived more broadly – as guiding

detail required for the extension of existing theory. Rather they wished to see how nature would behave under previously unobserved, often previously non-existent, circumstances. Their typical products were the vast natural or experimental histories in which were amassed the miscellaneous data that many of them thought prerequisite to the construction of scientific theory…That attitude towards the role and status of experiment is only the first of the novelties which distinguish the new experimental movement from the old. A second is the major emphasis given to experiments which Bacon himself described as "twisting the lion's tail." These were the experiments which constrained nature, exhibiting it under conditions which it could never have attained without the forceful intervention of man. The men who placed grain, fish, mice, and various chemicals seriatim in the artificial vacuum of a barometer or an air pump exhibit just this aspect of the new tradition.” (pp.11-13)

201

“Thus every one thing exists for the sake of all things and all for the sake of one; for the one is of course the all as well. Nature, despite her seeming diversity, is always a unity, a whole, and thus, when she manifests herself in any part of that whole, the rest must serve as a basis for that particular manifestation, and the latter must have a relationship to the rest of the system” (Setting Forth Morphology, GOS p.60).

202

scientific inquiry in general and not merely the discovery and systematization of mechanical laws.

Goethe contrasts his own approach, which he calls “delicate empiricism”, with the Baconian idea of “torturing” or “interrogating nature” through strictly contained and controlled (and, in Newton’s case, mathematically contrived) experimental situations that aim to isolate specific quantifiable properties of the objects of study. Everything in nature, and in our experience of nature, he argues, is thoroughly interconnected and is in motion, so that every particular experience or fact has to be understood in the context of a number, ultimately a countless number, of others.203 Artificial experimentation that hopes to find the basic principles that govern nature by isolating certain measurable (formal) aspects of natural phenomena, considering them in fixed separation from other aspects and elements, will not result in genuinely objective knowledge. Contra Bacon, Goethe insists that “nature will reveal nothing under torture.”204

In one of the milder versions of his criticism of Newton’s Optics, Goethe blames Newton for making a mistake of “using a single phenomenon, and an over-refined one at that, as the foundation for a hypothesis supposed to explain the most varied and far- reaching events in Nature.”205 While we can certainly learn something from a single experiment, it cannot on its own prove a theory or settle disputed questions. Since natural

203

In the Preface to the Theory of Colors, Goethe talks of the “language” of nature in which it “converses with itself and with us through a thousand phenomena.” “No one who is observant,” he adds, “will ever find nature dead or silent”. Nature is in constant movement and “[w]e perceive these elements of

movements and structure in a variety of ways: as simple attraction and repulsion, as the waxing and waning of light, as the motion of air, as vibration of solid bodies, as oxidation and reduction. All these, however, have the effect of dividing and uniting, of setting existence in motion and lending support to some form of life.” (GSS p.158, my emphasis)

204

Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, (GSS p.307); See also, “the phenomena must be freed once and for all from the grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man’s common sense” (GSS p.309).

205

phenomena are dynamically interconnected, Goethe stresses, “as worthwhile as each individual experiment may be, it receives its real value only when united or combined with other experiments”.206

Newton’s reliance on a single crucial experiment, or even a handful of relatively isolated experiments, amounts, according to Goethe, to forcing nature, under artificial conditions conducive to mathematizing the phenomenon, to produce just the result Newton wants to see. In an apparent reference to Newton, he writes, for example:

“We often find that the more limited the data, the more artful a gifted thinker will become. As though to assert his sovereignty he chooses a few agreeable favorites from the limited number of facts and skillfully marshals the rest so they never contradict him directly. Finally he is able to confuse, entangle, or push aside the opposing facts and reduce the whole to something more like the court of a despot than a freely constituted republic.” (The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object, GSS, p.15)

Most importantly, for Goethe, Newton’s version of Baconian experimentalism represents the scientific attitude that treats phenomena as mere signs, as it were, of hidden causes that produce them. This attitude, he argues, is unwarranted, fruitless, and even contrary to experience. He rejects the claim that we can deduce these hidden causes from just a few well-chosen phenomena, ignoring or discarding the multitude of other phenomenal manifestations and inter-connections.

The kind of experimental philosophy Goethe opposes in his polemic against Newton generalizes on an overly narrow basis of a few quantifiable phenomenal properties and relations between them. It allows a theory or hypothesis to intervene prematurely in the process of scientific investigation, before affinities, connections and mutual influences among the full range of phenomena are thoroughly investigated and the adequate

206

“experimental history” is put together. 207 In a way, Goethe sees Newton as not adhering to his own prohibition against feigning hypotheses.

It is fair to say, then, that in Goethe’s eyes, the Newtonian approach combines the worst aspect of Baconian experimental method – imposing presupposed external criteria on nature rather than seeking what is true or intrinsic in it – with what Bacon himself criticized as excesses of mathematizing science – formalization that over-generalizes across qualitatively different domains and tends to hide or disregard important differences and essential qualitative relations between the phenomena.

If the Newtonian method is unsatisfactory, in Goethe’s view, what does he offer in its place?

3. Goethe’s method and conception of science